Legalities of your CCTV

A Basic Overview of What You Are Allowed and Not Allowed To Do!

So you are toying with the idea of installing your very own CCTV system in your place of business or in your home, but you are wondering if this idea may come back to harm you. CCTV is nothing more than a set of cameras that are recording the movements of your employees or of those individuals who may be inside your home, and then transmitting these images to a monitor or to the Internet where you can view them. This form of closed-circuit television surveillance has been around for quite a while, and many businesses use it for a variety of reasons.  Some like the idea of making known their surveillance systems exist, so that employees, customers, and clients alike can modify their behavior accordingly; this kind of CCTV usage is usually referred to as deterrence and it may serve to deter theft, violence, robbery, employee negligence or misbehavior, and other incidents. Other times these kinds of surveillance systems are stationed outside a business to both deter crimes, such as vandalism, or record crimes, such as breaking and entering.

Generally speaking, the legalities of your CCTV are your responsibility, but there are some decided no-no’s that you must avoid. Here is a brief overview:

In general, you should refrain from placing any CCTV equipment in areas that individuals – employees or customers – would reasonably expect to have some privacy. Usually such places of privacy are bathrooms, toilets, showers, locker rooms, changing rooms, dressing rooms, and also motel and hotel rooms.

In 13 states it is forbidden by law to place CCTV equipment in such locations. These states are Alabama, Arkansas, California, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, South Dakota, and Utah. While in the other states you may be able to get away with placing a hidden camera or even an overt camera in a private place, in these states you will be breaking the law and it is a definite no-no! The only way to get around this prohibition is my getting each individual’s express permission to the taping.

For employees, it is further generally held that certain areas must be off-limits to CCTV surveillance, such as break rooms, lunch rooms, employee lounges, smoking lounges, or other areas on company property where employees may go during off hours to eat their lunches, take their breaks, or wait for their shifts to begin. This is especially stringently prosecuted if such stipulations have been made a part of a collective bargaining agreement in the case of union employees. Secretly spying on employees during their off-the-clock time is a big no-no.

Another no-no that you will need to be aware of pertains to your actual use of the information gleaned from your recordings. What will you do with your knowledge that employee A is getting a divorce, and that employee B is a diabetic?  If this personal information somehow leaks to the general population of employees and it can be traced back to you, you may well be accused of creating a hostile work environment. Additionally, consider that such information will not be admissible for use during performance reviews or when considering someone for a promotion and failure to comply with this regulation may well be considered as discrimination against an employee for reasons of illness, gender, marital status, and so forth. Tread lightly here or you may find yourself on the wrong end of a subpoena!

Even though privacy advocates generally hold that in the states where it is not expressly forbidden to place a hidden camera in a private area without employees’ and customers’ permission, anything goes, this is far from the truth!  The litigators have found that employers who resort to such “bugging” will have to prove that they installed a hidden camera in such an area specifically not for the reason of seeing an employee or customer partially or completely unclad. As you may well imagine, it is very hard to prove that you did not intend to do something, so the safest course of action will be to stay away from installing anything hidden in such areas no matter what.

As always when contemplating something that will affect the way you do business: be sure to consult an attorney first!